Share this:

Like this:

Last week, on a sunny and uncharacteristically warm day in the booming metropolis of Camrose, Alberta (hah! Population of 18K…) I was walking through the Superstore parking lot, when a woman about my age suddenly started her car and began backing out of the stall, and damned near ran me over.

She hadn’t looked – the time between turning the ignition and starting to move could only have been three seconds, and that’s being generous.

I caught a glimpse of her shocked and angry face, as she finally saw me, and then…it happened.

She gunned her car and peeled out of there like every demon of hell was in pursuit.

I wasn’t surprised.

People do this at Superstore all the time: they back out of parking spots as if they were the only mobile beings on the entire planet.

And they frequently do as this woman did, when they encounter, mid-back-out, a live human also occupying the world.

They scream away in a fury, as if to put as much possible distance between themselves and their driving faux pas as they can. To get away from their own actions. To pretend, if they can, by this distance, that they did not do this, that it never happened at all.

And there, I think, lies the problem of the modern western world. We have gotten very good at shedding the past. We’re experts at negation, at burial, at denial.

And the people that are the very best at this are people my age.

We raged at the “system” and hated “the man” when we were young – but not one in twenty of us will admit that we’ve betrayed that better vision of the world.

We’ve just collectively pretended it never happened. That we never rebelled. Never put a foot wrong. Never were the ones who wanted to change things.

Share this:

Like this:

Writers are all different, and they have a lot of different ways of describing/manifesting how characters in their work come into being.

Some of us are analytical: we use character sheets, balancing the strengths and weaknesses, outlining and pinpointing traits that we then use to (hopefully) further their plots. We “map” things. We rely on graphs and probabilities and numerical data. We know in advance that if “X” happens, the character(s) will do “Y” because “that’s who they are”.

Some of us are more “fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants” – we might create a basic character (he’s a roguish-type, but with aristocratic table manners/she’s pretty but with low self-esteem) and then – when a situation comes up – revisit those basic outlines, to add habits or quirks or secret talents, that further the plot or thematic stuff as we get deeper into things.

And some of us “claim” that we let the character tell us who they are, and then we just roll with that. (This is probably more of a metaphor, because really, it is our own brain, right?)

I’m definitely one of the last group: I write mostly in 1st-person singular, and it is (almost literally) the character telling me (and the reader, presumably) what happened, from their perspective, and why.

Because they know who they are. This is writing as exploration.

All this actually gives you a lot of insight into what kind of person the writer is.

The first group: well, I don’t want to cast aspersions, and there is nothing wrong with this approach, but I do think of them as the “authoritarian” writers: they believe that the facts they create in their heads really are facts. They believe in the binary. They believe that people/characters can be understood and charted.

And that’s a very human way to view the world, in reality as well as fiction.

The second group is fairly flexible: they think that people are variable, that people can change to a certain extent, and they allow for the possibility of those changes within their own stories. This is most of us, I think: we like the idea of possibility, although we are a bit less comfortable with the outcomes of that reality.

The third group feels more “reactive” – we grasp that we probably don’t know what other people think and feel unless they tell us, and we tend to trust, to a certain extent, the words people give us. If you (any “you”, including, obviously, the fictional “you”) say to me that at forty-five, you realized that your entire life has been a reaction against what your parent or guardian believed about you when you were five, but now you are free of that burden – I believe you.

If fictional character/real person tells me they are male, despite not having the external or physical characteristics of a “man”, I will believe them…and act/write accordingly.

If fictional character/real person tells me that they were a different person before someone they trusted completely betrayed them at the most intimate level – I will believe them, and operate or write the story to reflect that.

If a fictional character/real person tells me that oppression in their life occurred because of an accident of birth, even though I have never experienced that in my own life – I will believe them, and seek ways to illustrate that in language.

Gloriously, identity in fiction is up for grabs. My characters may believe they know who they are, what they are, and how they feel about those things, but as they move through their world, they can and often do discover deeper and more resonant aspects of their own condition – all of which are, quite obviously, generated from my own psyche.

But the fluidity that exists in me is real, and my ability to enter into the experiences and lives of others is part of my writing process.

And this must go double for real life.

You might have noticed that I draw the connection between fiction and life a lot on this blog.

Maybe you don’t think that’s pertinent, considering that I write fiction, and *fantasy fiction*, to boot, but I assure you, it is.

The truth about human beings lies not only in the hard reality of science, but in how we imagine worlds.

The truth in our minds is the truth in our bones. It is reactive truth in all three of the approaches I have outlined, but these are truths that are *reflective* truths, as well: they show our selves to ourselves, at our most internally basic.

Everything we write is a manifestation of our truer human-ness, and how we are in the world. And how we approach this communicative craft is the evidence of that reflection.

Brillat-Savarin said “Show me what you eat, and I will show you what you are.”

Share this:

Like this:

There’s a really interesting phenomenon on the internet when it comes to writers.

First, they form groups. Regularly and without fail, from the very beginning.

It used to be email bulletin board things. These were active conversations, and a lot of well-known editors and traditionally published writers were on them. You could ask them questions, get critiques on small bits of writing, and have in-jokes (mostly about what kinds of snacks writers prefer).

It was fun.

But there was no indie-publishing thing back then, and a whole lot fewer people were attempting to be writers, so it was pretty manageable.

Then came Facebook, and Facebook groups – and the ability to self-publish for next to nothing at all.

And the writing pool exploded. So did the Facebook groups (without most of the already-published writers and the actual, working editors) specifically for writers.

There are literally hundreds of them. Some are just for posting “BUY ME!” posts (which are useless because only writers frequent them, all of them sobbing “Buy my book, pleeeease!”), some are for exchanging writing tips and trying to figure out why their first chapter doesn’t “hook” anyone, and some are for learning how to market books as indie authors.

And then, with all this, came the “Reader’s Choice” contests. There are dozens, every year, all run by well-meaning but essentially clueless folks, in a vain attempt to create some kind of legitimacy for themselves.

I knew, from the start, that this would do only two things: generate a lot of internet noise about “How honoured I am”, and create a proliferation of categories and levels, so the maximum number of people could have the maximum number of badges and awards to claim.

The trouble is that ninety per cent of these things are popularity contests.

The winners are not the best books. They are not even the most “popular” books.

The writers who “win” these are simply the ones with the most friends and relations willing to invest twelve seconds into clicking to a site and voting for their son’s sci-fi adventure or their best friend’s erotic romance…and then, while they are there, noticing that one really sweet-but-needy writer from the sponsoring group (you know: the one who periodically announces they cannot go on, that no one appreciates them, and thus, they are giving up writing FOREVER – or at least until enough people in the group implore them to keep going because surely massive success is just around the corner, because they are such a treasure…) and they vote those writers up, too, because no one wants to be seen as unsupportive.

There’s no way to know if any of the voters have actually read the book(s) they vote on, let alone even sampled the ones they choose to ignore.

It’s not about the writing.

It’s not about the craft, or the skills, or the sheer talent. It’s not even about dedication in the face of massive indifference.

The awards themselves are less worthwhile than the scam awards (the ones created purely for the creators to make some $$$).

Because they are purely vote-based (and anyone, or their dog, can vote) there is no minimum standard to measure the work by.

In fact, there’s no way to know whether there is anything resembling an actual “book” linked with the title, without buying and reading every single one. I have actually toyed with the idea of throwing a title out there (with maybe a few pages of unpalatable shite below it, to get it onto Amazon) just to see how many people would vote it up. Even one vote would prove my point.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t throw your hat in the ring on these things. If nothing else, one of those friends or relations of another writer might look at the title and consider buying it.

I’m saying that these “contests” do not validate your work. I’m saying that you should feel slightly soiled – not “honoured” – because all you’ve gotten is a click response – the same click-response we have for pictures of cats belonging to people we don’t know.

I’m saying that unless all you are in this for is ego-boo, you might better spend your time and energy on writing, rather than stressing about whether or not you can convince enough of your friends on Facebook to vote for your little orphan opus to make you feel loved.